CHAPTER XXIII
BEYOND ALL FORMER FOOTSTEPS
On November 18 I imagined that we had reached the windless area of the Pole, for the Barrier was a dead, smooth, white plain, weird beyond description, and, having no land in sight, we felt tiny specks in the immensity around us. It seemed as though we were in some other world, and yet the things that concerned us most were such trifles as split lips and big appetites.
Already the daily meals were all too short, and we wondered what it would be like when we were really hungry. However, we were moving on at a rate of about fifteen miles a day, and every night that we camped we felt that another long step towards our desire had been made.
Soon I discovered that I was wrong in thinking that we had reached the windless area, for all the sastrugi began to point due south, but the whole place and conditions were so unlike anything else in the world of our experience, that it was extremely difficult to make correct forecasts as to what we should next encounter.
At one moment I thought of Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner": "Alone, alone; all, all alone, alone on a wide, wide sea"; and then, when the mazy clouds sprung silently up and, not followed by any wind, drifted quickly across our zenith, the only word to describe my feeling is uncanny.
It was as though we were truly at the world's end, and were bursting in on the birthplace of the clouds and the nesting-home of the four winds, and we could not suppress a feeling that we mortals were being watched with a jealous eye by the forces of nature.
Still, in spite of these sensations, which every one who goes out into the intensely lone places of the world must experience, we were more interested in such things as heavy going and soft surfaces than in anything else, for the surface was all-important to us and played the leading part in our day's work.
On November 20 we met with a terribly soft surface—so bad, in fact, that it sounded the death-knell of poor old Chinaman, who was no longer able to keep up with the others; and so we had to shoot him on the following day.
Let me say again that the killing of the ponies was not pleasant work, and that our only satisfaction was in knowing that they were well fed up to the last, and had suffered no pain. When we had to kill a pony we threw up a snow-mound to leeward of the camp, and took the animal behind this out of sight of the others.
Of necessity we had to eat the meat, and as within a very short time after killing the carcase was frozen solid, we always tried to cut the meat into small pieces before this occurred.
On the same day that saw the death of Chinaman we made our second depot, and left there 80 lb. of pony meat, one tin of biscuits weighing 27 lb., some sugar, and one tin of oil to see us back to Depot A.
With three ponies dragging 500 lb. each we left our depot, with its black flag flying on the bamboo lashed to a discarded, sledge, and were soon in new land to the south—land never before seen by human eyes.
The land consisted of great snow-clad heights rising beyond Mount Longstaff, and also far inland to the north of Mount Markham. We found that our latitude was 81° 8′ south.
The weather still remained splendid for marching, with a cool breeze from the south and the sun slightly hidden, but our enjoyment of the glorious view of peaks new to human eyes was marred by Wild being temporarily unwell, and by Adams suffering badly from toothache. Our first attempt to pull out this tooth merely resulted in the tooth breaking, but at a second attempt Marshall succeeded in getting it out, an achievement—under the conditions—as creditable to the one as it was welcome to the other.
Steady progress was made until November 26, which is a day which we travellers at least shall remember, for on it we passed the "farthest south" previously reached by man. On this night we reached latitude 82° 18 south, and our "farthest south" in the march with Captain Scott was 82° 16½′.
As each hour passed on this memorable day we found new interest to the west where the land lies, for we opened out Shackleton Inlet, and up the inlet a great chain of mountains, and far into the west still more peaks. To the west of Cape Wilson another chain of peaks about 10,000 ft. high appeared, and to the south-south-east new mountains were continually coming into view. It falls to the lot of few men to see land not previously looked upon by human eyes, and it was with feelings of keen curiosity and awe (mingled in my case with a fervent hope that no land would block our path) that we watched the new mountains rise from the great unknown that lay before us.
No man of us could even guess what wonders might be revealed to us in our march south, and our imaginations took wings until a stumble in the snow or the sharp pangs of hunger brought back our attention to the needs of the immediate present.
Our anxiety, however, to learn what lay before us was as keen as it could be, and the long days of marching over the Barrier surface were saved from monotony by the continued appearance of land to the south-east. As we marched on and new mountains kept on rising, we were concerned to notice that they trended more and more to the eastward, for that meant that we must alter our course from nearly due south. Nevertheless, we hoped that when we reached them some strait might be found which would enable us to go right through them and on south. Really, however, patience was of more use to us than speculation, for, come what might, we meant to push on until our limit of strength was reached.
By November 28 we had reached a truly awful surface, and poor Grisi, who had been smitten with snow-blindness, had to be shot in the evening. Having made Depot C. and left one week's provisions and oil to carry us back to Depot B, we went on the next morning with 1200 lb. weight, which we decided to pull with the ponies, but we quickly discovered that the ponies would not pull when we did, so we had to untoggle our harness.
The whole country seemed to be made up of range upon range of mountains, but the surface over which we were going was so bad that the ponies sank in right up to their bellies, and we had to pull with might and main to get the sledges to move.
By evening the ponies were nearly played out, especially old Quan, who was suffering, not from the weight of the sledge, but from the effort of lifting his feet and limbs through the soft snow, and on the following days we had practically to pull his sledge.
The time had come for him to go, and I am sure that we all felt losing him and I was especially sorry, as he had been my special pony for several months. In spite of all his annoying tricks, his immense intelligence made him a general favourite.